Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
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No installment next week.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.
— Groucho Marx
News
Q2 Google CAPEX
Google has definitely awoken. Q2 CAPEX spending of $13.19B, up 91%. YTD CAPEX is $25.2 billion. Guidance of $12 billion for both Q3 and Q4. Hopefully they can stretch a little and do $50 billion this year.
Stock was down 5% after earnings on some hypothesized combination of 1.) YouTube missing on revenue 2.) CAPEX guidance that “the risk of underinvesting is dramatically greater than the risk of overinvesting” and 3.) minimal AI revenue impact so far relative to investment.
Not Available in Europe: Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned (by Meta)
The EU is an Advanced Persistent Threat: Kernel Driver Edition
Next question: how many of the “European” security companies that lobbied the Superpower of Cheese for this regulation are Russian intelligence operations?
Previous:
The European Union is STILL an Advanced Persistent Threat, BREAKING: European Union Designated an Advanced Persistent Threat, Move Fast and Regulate Things: Welcome to the Morning After, Move Fast and Regulate Things (You Don’t Understand), When “Move Fast and Regulate Things” Breaks Down, AI Regulation: Move Fast and Regulate Things, EU Insanity: Regulating Blue Checks, EU Tweets While Ukraine Burns, EU Insanity: AI Regulatory Suicide, EU Insanity: Mistral Edition, The EU Will Continue to Fiddle While Rome Burns
Existential Corner: Floor Wax or Dessert Topping?
What does OpenAI aspire to be? It is hard to do one thing well, never mind multiple things in the face of intense competition. Is OpenAI a techology provider (where is GPT-5?). A consumer services company? An enterprise company? Now a search company?
ClownWatch™: IBM Q2 Update
“We had a strong second quarter, exceeding our expectations, driven by growth in both revenue and free cash flow. We continue to see that clients turn to IBM for our technology and our expertise in enterprise AI, and our book of business for generative AI has grown to more than two billion dollars since the launch of watsonx one year ago,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman and chief executive officer.
- “Strong” revenue growth: 1.9% (they rounded up to 2% of course)
- “Data and AI” Segment Revenue: down 3%
- CAPEX: $399 million (not billion), down 18%
IBM retains its position at the top of the ClownWatch™ list.
Previous:
Platformonomics ClownWatch™, Platformonomics ClownWatch™: IBM, Follow the CAPEX: The Clown Car Race Checkered Flag, Introducing Platformonomics ClownWatch™, IBM and the Art of Misleading Investors, This Week in Securities Fraud, Clown CAPEX, IBM’s “Cloud” Business (or Lack Thereof), IBM: How Much Longer Do the Good Times Last?, IBM’s Lost Decade
ClownWatch™: Digital Realty Trust Q2 Update
A revenue decline bodes poorly for cloud repatration partisans. We’ll update the Platformonomics Repatriation Index™ after Amazon and Equinix report.
Elon’s “Just Irresponsible” Gigafactory of Compute
Who better than thin-skinned fractional CEO Elon Musk to assuage community concerns? He does still need a TVA power agreement so local sentiment probably matters.
Previous:
Can Elon Build a Data Center?, Pollyanna Showdown, Elon Musk Threatens to Ban Oracle?,
Who’s Getting the GPUs? Elon Shell Game Edition, Platformonomics ClownWatch™: Tesla, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon Musk Part II, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon/Twitter, Company Killed By Its Customers, Elon Cashes in All the Trust He’s Banked with Twitter, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 147, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 148, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 149, Oracle Still Can’t Build Data Centers, Why Can’t Oracle Build Data Centers?, Oracle Moves to Nashville